Consolidated Nuclear Security moved a meeting for potential bidders on a construction contract for the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, to a nearby college from the nuclear-weapons maintenance site, the contractor wrote in an online notice.
“[D]ue to the number of requests we have moved the venue off site to prevent issues with badging,” the plant’s prime contractor wrote in a notice published late last week.
Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) prime contractor for the Pantex Plant and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., expects to need multiple contractors to split a construction pact worth $600 million over 10 years, with options.
The contract would cover as many as 15 buildings planned at Pantex over the next decade, coinciding with the NNSA’s drive to refurbish or rebuild nearly every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. Winning contractors would be tasked with developing a “standard Pantex design” on which the structures could be based.
CNS expects to accept bids by Dec. 1, the company said earlier this month. The Bechtel-led team is under contract at Pantex at least until Sept. 30, 2024. The site, in the Texas panhandle, assembles, disassembles and maintains all U.S. nuclear weapons.
